Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (37 page)

She stops to scent the air, brushes her hand through the wind as if reading a message. The servant watches her almost wor-shipfully; he has no beard, and wears a torn and dirty robe that might once have belonged to a frater as well as a Circle of Unity at his neck. He waits as she lifts her stone-tipped spear and rattles it in the wind. The bells attached to its base tinkle, shattering the silence around him
—

"And now, at last, I have found you."

He bolted up, growling, and was on his feet with arms raised to strike before he came entirely awake. In Bloodheart's hall, speed had been his only defense. Speed—and a stubborn refusal to die. From under the window the Eika dog growled weakly but did not otherwise stir.

"Sanglant!" Liath crossed to him and pulled his arms down, then stood there with one hand on his wrist. An uncanny light gleamed in the chamber, sorcerer's fire: heatless and fuelless. He steadied himself on her shoulder, and she winced—not from his touch, but from pain.

"What has happened?" He moved to stand in front of Liath, to protect her from the intruder, but she stopped him.

"This is my mother."

The gauze still entangled his mind.
Her mother.
He could see no trace of Liath in this woman's face, except that the unconscious pride with which Liath carried herself was made manifest in this noblewoman's carriage and expression: That she wore a gold torque did not astonish him, although it surprised him. Was she of Salian descent? She watched him without speaking and indeed without any apparent emotion except a touch of curiosity.

"What do you want?" he asked bluntly. "We are wed, she and I."

"So I have heard, as well as a great deal else. It is time Liath left this place."

"For where?" asked Liath.

"And with whom?" added Sanglant.

"It is time for Liath to fulfill that charge which is rightfully hers by birth. She will come with me to my villa at Verna where she will study the arts of the mathematici."

Sanglant smiled softly. Liath tensed, but whether with worry— or excitement—at the prospect he could not tell. And in truth, how well did he know her? The image he had made of her in his mind had little to do with her: In the brief days since she had returned, he had seen her to be both more—and less—than the imagined woman he had built his life around during those months of captivity. But he was willing to be patient.

"You speak of forbidden sorcery," he observed. "One that the church has condemned."

"The church does not condemn what is needful," Anne replied. "Thus I am assured that God approve our work."

"Our
work?" he murmured.

Liath dropped his wrist and stepped forward. "Why did you

abandon Da and me? Why did you let us think you were dead for all those years?"

"I did not abandon you, child. You had already fled, and
we
could not find you."

"You must have known Da couldn't take care of us!"

She had a puzzling face, one that didn't show her years, yet neither did she appear young. "Bernard loved the world too much," she said sadly, although her expression never varied from that face that reminded him most of Sister Rosvita when she was soothing Henry: the mask of affability that all successful courtiers wear. "It was his great weakness. He could not turn away from the things of the flesh—all that is transient and mortal. He delighted in the spring plants, in the little fawns running among the trees, in your first steps and first words, but these delights are also a trap for the unwary, for by these means the Enemy wraps-his tendrils around those of good heart who are seduced by the beauty of the world." She sighed in the way of a teacher who regards a well-loved if exasperating pupil. "I see his mark on you, Daughter. But his alone. No other hand has worked in your soul to corrupt you. To change you."

"To change me?"

"From what you are meant to be."

"Which is?" asked Sanglant.

"A mathematicus," said Anne firmly. "Gather your things, Liath. We will leave now and be gone long before day breaks."

"With what retinue do we travel?" asked Sanglant.

She regarded him with that unfathomable gaze, and for an instant the chamber dimmed, and his skin trembled as if snakes crawled up his arms and legs, and he was shaken by a fear like nothing he had ever felt before: what an ant might feel in that shadowed moment before a hand reaches down to crush it.

Then the moment passed, and he merely stood in an ordinary chamber fitted out with the usual luxuries due to a fighting man of noble birth: two carpets thrown over the plank floor; a chest filled with clothing and linens; a table and, with it, a chair rather than a common bench; an engraved copper basin and pitcher for washing his face and hands as well an enamel tray, several wooden platters, two bone spoons, two silver goblets and one bowl fashioned out of gold; a plush feather bed covered by a spread magnificently embroidered with the figure of a black dragon, sigil of his triumphs as a soldier. The globe of magelight illuminated every corner of the room and all that it held: every piece of it come to him out of his father's treasury and his father's favor, which was itself a kind of prison. His armor and weapons—his morning gift—gleamed under the light as if they had been enchanted with unknown powers. And perhaps they were: They had come to him through his own efforts.

"You propose to travel with us?" Anne asked finally.

"I am a king's son, and whatever your lineage, my lady, you cannot look down upon my kin and my noble birth."

"It is the sins of the world and the weaknesses of the flesh that I look down upon. Shall I subject my daughter to them further? Or save her from them by taking her away from all that tempts her?"

"The blessed Daisan said that within marriage we may find purification. Salvation arises out of creation."

She folded her hands before her like a saint readying for prayer. "You are a learned man, Prince Sanglant."

"Not at all. But I listen when the clerics read from the Holy Verses." He allowed himself a smile, half lost on his lips and quickly passing away. He knew a battle joined when he met one; and, as always, he intended to win.

"What have you to offer me?" she asked.

"The protection I can bring you as we travel, in exchange for which you will agree to feed and clothe me, and supply me with a suitable mount."

"I do not need that kind of brute protection. In addition, I have only two mounts suitable for riding. You have nothing but service to offer me, Prince Sanglant. Will you bind yourself to me as a servant, one who
walks
at my side?"

The first blow that lands always comes as a surprise. But he knew better than to flail.

Liath did not. Her anger fairly sparked off her. "I have something you want," she cried furiously.

Her anger had no effect on the depthless calm worn by her mother. "What is that?"

"Myself!"

"Earthly ties can only interfere with the concentration and detachment required of any person who wishes to learn the arts of the mind."

"I have a horse, and I will only go with you if Sanglant comes with us. He will ride beside us on my horse not as a servant but as a soldier. As a captain."

"As he was once captain of the King's Dragons." Anne studied him. He recognized the measuring gaze of one whose course of action is not yet fixed. But he chose to wait. Perhaps Liath's flanking action would serve the purpose, and the truth was that he did not care how the victory was won. He simply would not leave her.

"His name is famous among the people of Wendar and Varre, and among their enemies," Liath continued. "He is worth more than you know."

Anne lifted a hand to capture the magelit globe and turn its light directly upon him. He had to blink at first because the light was so strong, but he did not shrink from her scrutiny. "Nay, Liathano, I am not unaware of his worth, the child of human and Aoi blood. Not at all."

Like a warning finger run up his back, his spine tingled.

"It is not what I expected," she said, still studying him in the way an eagle gliding above the earth surveys the landscape below and all that runs there. "But still. We can learn more than we have known up until now."

"Then it's agreed?" Liath stuck stubbornly to the issue at hand.

"It is agreed."

"Ai, Lady!" Liath embraced him, shedding a few tears. "I pray God that we find the peace you long for when we reach Verna."

He kept his arms around her but his gaze on her mother, who watched them without approval and yet without any obvious censorious d/sapproval. Her gaze had its own disconcerting backwash. He did not trust her. Yet neither did he feel in his gut that Liath's choice to go with her was the wrong one. This contradiction he could not explain to himself.

Liath sighed with satisfaction and raised her head to get a kiss, and of course he complied.

But that did not mean he stopped listening.

"This, too, is unexpected," Anne murmured, too softly for Liath to hear, but he heard very well, as well as a dog. "But not without advantage for our cause."

The palace slept as they made their way through the upper enclosure, but it was a natural sleep; he recognized its rustlings and murmurings. As they packed their few possessions, Liath had haltingly told him the entire story of Hugh's attack, and while at first he had certainly wanted nothing more than to get his hands around Hugh's throat and throttle him, he knew enough to let the feeling swell and then burst. They were in enough trouble. Henry would refuse to let them leave; all three of them knew that unsavory fact, and they worked more quickly, and in such silence as they could, because of it, although it was a tricky business getting the gelding out of the stable.

When at last they arrived at the gate where three mules and one horse waited, he began to doubt Anne's princely appearance because she had no retinue. An instant later, he knew himself mistaken when he heard whispering on the air. They spoke in a language he did not recognize, more wind than voice, and he could not see them, but he heard the breath of their movement and the rustling of that portion of their invisible bodies which gave them substance.

"Who is there?" murmured Liath, as if afraid her whisper would wake the palace. The magelight seemed now to Sanglant merely a particularly bright lantern—although its glow had too steady a flame to be natural.

"My servants," said Anne softly.

He shuddered as fingers trailed over his back, searching, then vanished. Breath tickled an ear, and his hair stirred, blown into his eyes. By the time he brushed it away, he was alone again. He threw his armor—muffled in the dragon-sigil-bedspread— over the back of one of the pack mules and tied it on securely, then handed the spear to Liath. "I must get the dog,"

"The dog!" He had surprised Anne.

"My retinue," he said sardonically. "If I leave it here, they will kill it. It saved my life more than once."

"Ghastly creature!" she muttered, but then that flicker of emotion fled and she merely nodded, as if the exchange—and the presence of the dog—were too trivial for her to notice.

He had to go quietly. In the chapel, clerics sang Vigils. Their voices rose and fell so sinuously that he almost lost step and forgot to walk, caught in their melodious prayer. Lions snored lustily at his door; none had woken from their magicked sleep. He crossed the threshold, hoisted the dog, and hauled it back to the gates. He threw it like a sack of grain over the back of one of the pack mules and fastened it there with rope, then calmed the mule, who did not take well to the smell of Eika on its back. But even working quickly, he did not finish in time.

Soldiers came out of the gloom, twenty or thirty of them, all of them leading horses burdened with a soldier's kit.

"My lord prince!"

Yet they spoke in whispers, not in a shout that would wake the palace and the gate guards who still slept at their posts.

"Who are these?" asked Anne mildly.

"My lady Sister!" Well trained to a man, they knelt respectfully as such milites would before any noble cleric. Surprised, Sanglant glanced at her. She had pulled a golden strip of cloth over her hair to cover it; no gold gleamed at her throat to betray her exalted rank. "I beg your pardon, my lord prince," continued their spokesman, the same Captain Fulk, "but when your recent trouble came upon you, we met together and pledged an oath all as one: That we would follow you if you left the king. We beg you, Prince Sanglant. Let us ride with you. We will follow you even into death if only you will give us your pledge to lead us faithfully."